Afterimage22 (January 1995) Aesthetic Evangelists: Conversion and Empowerment in Contemporary Community Art 1 Grant H. Kester During the last two years a new set of practices and a new set of assumptions about the role of the artist have emerged in the U.S. as part of what is being called the "new public art." 2 This "new genre" of public art, according to critic Suzi Gablik, "takes the form of interactive, community-based projects inspired by social issues." 3 . In fact, the new public art might be more accurately named the new community art to the extent that questions raised by the interaction of the artist and particular, often urban, communities, have played a central role in its evolution. Further, this work tends to be less concerned with producing objects per se than with a process of collaboration, which is understood to produce certain pedagogical effects in the community. In this way the new, community-based public art represents a transition from an earlier model of public art which involved the location of sculptural works in sites administered by public agencies—either federal, state or local governments or other administrative bodies (e.g. airports, parks, etc.)—or alternately, private locations (e.g. some of the works in the "New Urban Landscape" exhibition at the World Financial Center in Battery Park City in 1988). The growing influence of this new public art is evident in the proliferation of articles, conferences, books, exhibitions, and commissions. It can also be observed in the changing funding mandates of major private foundations, for whom "community" has become the buzzword of the moment. There are a range of positions among private sector funders, from the Lannan Foundation in Los Angeles, which is shifting almost entirely from arts funding to funding for 'social issues,' to the
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which the delegate is merely the passive reflection of a prior political entity. As he
argues, while the delegate does derive his identity, and the legitimacy of his political
position, from the mandate of the community, it is also true that the "community"
itself comes into existence (politically and symbolically) through the expressive
medium of the delegate.
There are two interrelated meanings of the term "representation" at play in
Bourdieu's essay. The first refers to the act of political representation—a process by
which the community, through its own electoral procedures, selects an individual
subject to speak its collective will in political debates, etc. Within the representational
dynamic of community politics, Bourdieu warns, the contingency of the act of
delegation is often "forgotten" and the delegate emerges, through a kind of "social
magic," as a fetish, a "moral person" who has sacrificed all to become the literal
embodiment of the community's will.8 We can observe something of this process in
the rhetoric of community artists who position themselves as the vehicle for a kind of
unmediated expressivity on the part of a given community. As Hope Sandrow,
founder of the Artist and Homeless Collaborative, writes:
I'd been doing do many exhibitions [of her own art work] and wanted to getmore involved in the community. [Homelessness] was an issue I saw everytime I walked out the door. . . . I wanted to understand, but I never knew whatthey thought. I thought that art, which was what I had to offer, could be ameans for them to speak for themselves. (italics mine)9
The second mode of representation occurs as the delegate confirms and
legitimates his or her political power through the act of literally re-presenting or
exhibiting the community itself, in the form of demonstrations and other political
performances. The delegate must "mobilize the group. . . in a demonstration or
display of the group's existence. . . the spokesperson demonstrates his legitimacy by
demonstrating or displaying those who have delegated him." This act can sanction
led to the images being removed altogether. This situation was relatively unusual. In
many community-based public art projects it is precisely the community whose voice
is never heard. The institutional authority of the artist, their privileged relationship to
channels of 'legitimate' discourse about the project (through media coverage, their
alliance with sponsoring and funding agencies, etc.), conspire to create the
appearance of a harmony of interests even where none may actually exist.
The signifying authority of the community artist is based on two points of
ideological anchorage. First, their authority is understood to derive from the process
of a pedagogically-based "collaboration". This is an "exchange," in which the artist,
by surrendering some degree of their creative autonomy in negotiations with a given
group over the production of a project is understood to have gained in return some
authority to speak from the group's position or on their behalf. The second point of
anchorage is founded on a moment of transference (usually some event in the
artists' past), that establishes a moral equivalence between their position and that of
the community. Thus, Alfredo Jaar is authorized to speak on behalf of Bangladeshi
women, or to represent them from a position of moral outrage, because of his own
past as an exile from a repressive regime (Chile). In the Pratibha Parmar/Alice
Walker film Warrior Marks (1994), Alice Walker is able to identify with the African
women who undergo genital mutilation because, as she describes it, she received
her own "patriarchal wound" when she was shot in the eye with a pellet gun by her
brother when she was seven years old.12 Hope Sandrow was able to more fully
identify with the homeless after her own brush with tragedy, related by a sympathetic
critic:
Deeply affected by the misery that was Catherine Street [a homeless shelter in NYC], Sandrow recalls that it often took days to recover from her visits.Still, not until 1988, when her blossoming career suffered a derailment after an accident destroyed two years' worth of work she had made for a solo
show. . . did [Sandrow] finally begin to understand how it felt to have nocontrol over one's own life. . .13
Bourdieu's analysis can help us to appreciate the contingency of the delegate'sposition, and to question the tendency of some community artists to
unproblematically identify their interests (professional, political, creative, moral,
economic, etc.) with those of the community. Too often community artists imagine
that the very real differences that exist between themselves and a given community
can be transcended by a well meaning rhetoric of aesthetic 'empowerment'. At the
same time there is a degree to which Bourdieu, in his desire to emphasize the
autonomy of the delegate/signifier, disavows the autonomous development of the
community. While there is clearly a certain "circularity" in the signifying relationship
between artist and community I would not grant the delegate the creative autonomy
allowed by Bourdieu (as he writes "it is the delegate who creates the group." 14
I am concerned to emphasize the importance of an a priori community; a
community that exists prior to the "creative" act of delegation. This community
comes into existence not just as an effect of the delegate's signifying powers, but as
a result of a highly complex social and cultural process. For the purposes of my
analysis this process can be understood to take place in two stages. The first stage,
as outlined above, occurs as the "community" appoints or determines a delegate
who will speak on its behalf. However, this act must be preceded by a process of
political self-definition through which the community itself is formed. This process
unfolds against the experience of a collective mode of oppression (racism, sexism,class-ism, etc.) and within a set of shared cultural and discursive traditions. These
"politically coherent" communities emerge after undergoing a process of internal
debate and consensus formation. This formation almost always takes place against
resuscitate their sense of "self-esteem" and to provide them with a meaningful
creative experience that will allow them to become "participants in their own
reclamation"16.
A very different kind of "collaboration" would arise out of a project produced
with a politically-coherent community. In this case the collaboration would be
characterized by a more equitable process of exchange and mutual education, with
the artist learning from the community and having his or her own presuppositions
(about the community, specific social, cultural, and political issues, etc.) challenged
and expanded. Consider how the Jaar installation might have been different had he
consulted, and attempted to learn from, the young Bangladeshi women whose
condition he was so anxious to portray. I'm not arguing that artists shouldn't work
with individuals outside the context of politically coherent communities (although I
would suggest that the artists' own imaginary construction of a given community
plays a significant, if often unacknowledged, role in most collaborations). Rather, I
simply want to note the danger that artists face in employing a kind of individualizing
address which, intentionally or not, reinforces dominant political ideologies that
communities have struggled to define themselves in opposition to. I cannot
emphasize too strongly the political stakes involved in the tendency to individualize
and (pathologize) the experience of oppression that is a hallmark of the ascendent
conservative world view. I will examine this worldview in more detail in the next
section.
II: MALLEABLE SUBJECTS AND MORAL PEDAGOGY
There is a heritage of noble obligation which young people accept and long toperpetuate. The desire for action, the wish to right wrong and alleviatesuffering haunts them daily.
—Jane Addams, Address to the Ethical Culture Societies, 189217
"spiritual growth" provided by individual acts of philanthropy.19 However, there is also
a consistent concern with personal transformation, most notably in the persistent use
of the concept of "empowerment," which has been taken from its original context in
progressive models of pedagogy developed during the 1960's and 1970's.
Prominent conservative columnist George F. Will, in a syndicated column
titled, "The Lethal Crisis in Welfare" (June, 1994), provides a useful precis of the
conservative position:
The new, grimmer understanding is that many of the urban poor do not lackonly the things government can dispense—food, housing, money. Rather,theirs is a poverty of inner resources . . . Todays task, daunting because
novel, is the deliberate regeneration of the 'social capital' of habits and moresnecessary for civilized living. . . 20
The rhetoric of "inner resources" and "social capital" is striking. We encounter a
similar "explanation" of black poverty in Charles Murray's new book The Bell Curve
(1994). Of course there is nothing particularly new about arguments that the poor
are morally depraved or mentally incompetent. We need only go back three decades
to New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's influential report "The Negro Family:
The Case for National Action," (1964) in which Moynihan suggested that the "cause"
of persistent black poverty was not racism or economic and political
disenfranchisement, but rather a "tangle of pathology" with a fatally flawed, woman-
centered family structure at its core. Moynihan's recommendations included
mandatory military service for young black men to ensure their exposure to "an
utterly masculine world. . . away from women, a world run by strong men of
unquestioned authority."21 But even Moynihan's argument is merely a contemporary
manifestation of a long standing set of conservative ideas about poverty, morality,
and the relationship between the individual, society, and the state. Over 150 years
ago in his Philosophy of Right (1821), Hegel was expressing his concern about the
presence of a "penurious rabble" that might receive support from the state "directly"
and not by means of their own labor, thereby destroying their "feeling of individual
independence and self-respect."22 And Lord Lytton in his England and the English
(183?) castigates the "moral degradation" encouraged by the Poor-laws in terms that
are entirely contemporary:
The effects of the Poor-laws on the social system are then briefly these;—they encourage improvidence, for they provide for its wants; they engender sexual intemperance, for they rear its offspring; by a necessary reaction, thebenefits conferred on the vicious pauper, become a curse on the honestlabourer.23
Thus politicians and philosophers have for at least the past century and a half
been obsessed with mapping the mental and emotional landscape of the poor with
the goal of regulating it to meet their needs. The poor are understood as malleable
subjects, dangerously susceptible to corrupting moral influences, whose
consciousness can be formed and transformed through the application of
pedagogical techniques. It was during the mid-19th century that a model of
organized social policy based on this concept of the individual first coalesced. Early
reform movements centered in cities in Europe and the U.S. attempted to provide
the emergent industrial bourgeoisie with the tools necessary to morally regulate the
urban working class. These movements addressed themselves to a broad range of
maladies associated with the concentration of dangerous populations of immigrants
and the the working class in the industrial city. The "friendly visitor" as a combination
of model subject and bureaucratic spy; the judicious dispensation of advice as well
as, or in place of, alms, the constant concern with discriminating between the
"deserving" and the "undeserving" poor, and the primary focus on the moral
regeneration of the poor over any real concern with systematic changes in the
surrounding society, are all hallmarks of a "Victorian" model of social policy.
The communities with whom we work are not really our customers, since anincrease in their support and enthusiasm will not necessarily increase our grant, justas a decrease in their interest will not necessarily decrease our grant. In institutionalterms, they [the community] are our 'clients,' and what that really means is that they
are the raw material upon which we work, on behalf of our customers, who are theagencies tho whom we well the reports and documentary evidence of our work.31
I would contend, especially in the context of the institutional and ideological
shifts I described earlier, that the community artist is in many cases being positioned
as a kind of social service provider. In some cases support is being given to artists'
projects by organizations or funders whose primary interest is no longer in the arts
but in social programs. This is significant because conservatives have been at least
partially successful in arguing that existing, state-sponsored, social programs have
failed and that "new approaches" are necessary. Thus, artists are being placed in
the position of providing alternatives to existing forms of social policy. To the extent
that artists (consciously or not) subscribe to a set of ideas about poverty or
disempowerment that are available to conservative cooptation they contribute to the
dismantling of existing social policy (such as it is) and its replacement with a
privatized notion of philanthropy and moral pedagogy. Obviously community artists
can exercise only a limited control over the kinds of funding they receive, however, I
would want to argue that artists must first be conscious of the broader politics of
funding if they are to develop effective strategies to challenge them.
The third implication has to do with the structural relationship that exists
between the community artist and the various groups and individuals with whom
they work. Within a "Victorian" model of welfare the act of giving to the poor is
understood to derive from a universal reservoir of human sympathy and
benevolence, and it is precisely this ostensible "universality" that endows the welfare
provider with their moral authority. The greater the social and cultural gulf that
Within this mythology the artist becomes a channel or medium for the
congealed residues of both their own and other people's experiences of social
oppression. Each new site, issue, or community, becomes another opportunity to
reaffirm their social transcendence through the universal language of art, which can
bridge cultural differences and heal social divisions. The artist is no longer a
particular individual, located at the intersection of a set of historically specific class,
racial, sexual, and other identities, but rather, a universal and nomadic empath. In
the case of the community artist it is the ostensible "universality" of the aesthetic
itself which allows them to claim a moral or pedagogical authority in cultural and
social domains where their intervention might otherwise be regarded with some
suspicion. I'm not suggesting that this analysis provides an accurate
characterization of community art practice today; rather it is is a resume, in extreme
form, of some of the dangers that confront artists and intellectuals (myself included)
who overlook the contingency of their own positions.
III: URBAN WARRIOR MYTHS—A CASE STUDY
While I've certainly given evidences of liberal tendencies and politicalpositions I have come out of this experience and I have to constantly bring upconservative positions in my own thought, and I don't know yet how to resolvethat.
—Dawn Dedeaux32
In order to make what is an admittedly complicated analysis somewhat more
concrete I want to conclude by examining a community art project that has gained a
great deal of attention in the U.S. during the last two years. The project, called "Soul
Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths," was developed by a New Orleans-based artist
Dawn Dedeaux. "Soul Shadows" is a massive installation composed of literally
The trouble with a lot of politically motivated art is a failure of nerve. Artistswho produce work that they know is not favored by our established regimeare not necessarily taking risks, since they can forecast the results. Trulytaking a risk means not knowing what's going to happen in the end. . . . 37
Dedeaux's production of "Soul Shadows" is thus premised on a complex dynamic of
privilege, authority, and access. The ultimate validation of Dedeaux's power of
aesthetic transcendence is provided by her relationship with Wayne Hardy, a
notorious drug dealer and gang member in New Orleans who was looked upon with
awe by her juvenile students. Dedeaux's access to Hardy, literally embodied in
larger than life-size photographs of his partially nude body, provides on of the central
images in the installation. Dedeaux met Hardy in a courtroom during a murder trial
and established a rapport with him. She was eventually able to conduct extensive
videotaped interviews with him and his brother, and was even able to convince him
to pose in various costumes that are intended to refer to the history of art and to
modern pop culture icons. These wall size prints are featured in the segment of the
installation called "the Tomb of the Urban Warrior." They portray Hardy dressed as
various archetypical figures, ranging from John Wayne and Rambo to St. Sebastian,
Shiva, Nike, and Poseidon.38
In her interviews about the project Dedeaux recounts the highly charged
moment when she first revealed her access to Hardy to the juvenile offenders.
I brought the tape the following day into the prison, into the juvenile dorm. Ihooked it up and they asked what I was showing them today. I said I did aninterview with the Hardy boys and they all started laughing. They said that if I'd gotten near the Hardy boys, I'd be dead now. . . I hooked up the equipmentand five minutes later there I am with the Hardy boys. They looked on indisbelief. . . and they just gravitated, 96 in one dorm all shoved up in front. . . .You could hear a pin drop. They hung on to every word for an hour and a half.Deputies came out; everybody was in disbelief. This was the highestconcentration and attention span ever. It was real life. This wasn't GeorgeBush or William Bennett talking about drugs. This was one of their heroes
saying he was ready to give it up, saying "maybe we better rethink this".That's much better than some social worker saying 'be a good boy'.39
This cathartic moment clearly made an impression on Dedeaux. She learned that bygaining access to Hardy and the "real life" authority that he signified, by possessing
him conceptually and creatively as the subject matter of her art, she could gain
respect and legitimacy in the eyes of her young charges. I think she learned that this
access could bring her legitimacy in the art world as well. Dedeaux asserts her
power over her students by proving her access to an even greater "authenticity," or
realness. This is also how she gains authority over "us" as middle-class viewers in
an art context, by trading on her image as an intrepid explorer of the social
landscape, journeying into the "belly of the beast" to return with a diagnostic report
on the culture of poverty and crime.
Having achieved this access and this authority, what does Dedeaux do with
it? Implicit in "Soul Shadows" is a narrative cycle of personal redemption that the
work of art both documents and is intended to catalyze. This cycle begins, as does
the conservative model outlined earlier, with contrition. Thus, Wayne Hardy provided
Dedeaux with a video-taped interview in which he 'warns' her young students about
the dangers of a life of crime. The talking head interviews that predominate in the
video area provide the repeated spectacle of grieving black inmates offering
confessional accounts of their involvement with crime. More specifically, in these
narratives the prisoners construct their criminality almost entirely in terms of their
own guilt and responsibility. One particularly wrenching interview with an African American woman features her sobbing warning not to "make the same mistakes"
that she did. Another admonishes the viewer: "Since I've been in jail I've had time to
take an inventory of myself and see where I made my mistakes. . . I was out for
myself, I was wrong".
The experience of contrition is understood as the prelude to an aesthetically-
driven process of redemption and personal transformation, described in one
exhibition pamphlet as "the "journey towards self actualization". Thus, despite the
dire social conditions that Dedeaux's installation portrays, as one flyer has it, the
"overall message of the piece is one of hope. . . .The artist reveals her belief that
within each of us there is the potential for transformation". And, as Joe Lewis writes:
the most provocative and re-occurring issue addressed here is the notion of
change. No matter how far down an individual may have gone, the realizationthat it is possible to change, to rise up and overcome, is perhaps the mostmiraculous of all transformative experiences.40
Just what kind of "change" is at issue here? The transformative impulse generated
through "Soul Shadows" is directly solely at adjusting the emotional and
psychological condition of the incarcerated through a kind of spiritual/aesthetic
therapy administered by the artist as exemplary subject. It is no doubt the case that
the experience of prison might produce a degree of self-reflection and soul-
searching. It is also quite conceivable that this experience might lead to truly positive
changes in someone's life. However, the inclusion by Dedeaux of this kind of
material, with no real attempt to articulate its relationship to broader social conditions
and forces, and in the context of existing conservative arguments about moral
depravity among poor and working-class people of color, is both irresponsible and
potentially damaging to the very "community" that Dedeaux hopes to assist.
The problem of an individualizing rhetoric of personal transformation is
underscored by the decisions that Dedeaux made in her selection of a "community"
for this project. Prisons are particularly problematic institutional sites at which to
The possibility of systematic social change is thus foreclosed, not only by the
triumph of conservativism, but by the assimilation of an evangelical model of
personal transformation that is left unarticulated to any larger social context.
Dedeaux has argued that it is not her intention to "place all the burden of change on
the underclass," and that "there is only hope for the future if society develops
mechanisms to support the transformation".41 However, precisely what these
mechanisms might be is never defined, or even raised as an issue in the work. Aside
from some pop-sociology references to the over-emphasis on material gain in
American culture there is absolutely no effort in "Soul Shadows" to link images of
prison life or gang life to a systematic critique of the current drug economy, urban
unemployment, or any of the myriad of political, economic, and social forces that
produce and reproduce these conditions.
In fact, Dedeaux explicitly states that she considers questions such as these
to be beyond the proper domain of the artist. As the installation flyer from Rochester
notes, Dedeaux:
. . . aims to avoid the polemics of specific politics and social policy, leavingthat course for the masters of those professions. [instead] the artist employscross-cultural/art historical references that her own discipline clearly qualifiesher to do. This is the function of an artist in the interdisciplinary world—findingthe bridges, the mirrors, and in the case of "Soul Shadows," finding a way for the viewer not to immediately blame, but rather to understand.42
I think it is notable that for Dedeaux the artists' proper "function" stops at precisely
that point at which their work might raise troubling questions of "politics" and "policy".
Community artists are "qualified" to diagnose the emotional maladies of the
incarcerated, and to unthinkingly reiterate the most problematic commonplaces of
conservative ideology, but when it comes to diagnosing the structural features of the
urban economy they suddenly find themselves out of their depth. The question I
has, unfortunately, left the field of critical analysis entirely to right wing ideologues
who denounce this kind of work out of hand and encourage a general skepticism
about it among the public. I think community-based public art is at a cross-roads in
its development as a mature practice (or set of practices); it has reached a point at
which it can sustain, and benefit from, a response that is supportive of its goals
without sacrificing a critical distance.
1 This essay is an expanded version of a lecture given at the conference "Littoral: New Zonesfor Critical Art Practice," held at the School of Visual Arts, University College Salford, Englandfrom September 8-September 11, 1994. The conference was organized by Ian Hunter and
Celia Larner of Projects Environment. In addition to Ian and Celia, I would like to thank thefollowing people for their comments in response to the ideas presented in this essay: JoBannister, David Harding, Steve Mulvaney, Stefan Szczelkun, Camila Mesquita (who broughtthe work of the Artist and Homeless Collaborative to my attention), and the rest of the studentsin my Contemporary Issues seminar at the Visual Studies Workshop.2 The most recent center of attention for this work has been curator Mary Jane Jacob's"Culture in Action" project in Chicago. See: Carole Tormollan, "New Public Art in Chicago,"High Performance, (Spring 1994), pp.50-54.; Allison Gamble, "Reframing a Movement:Sculpture Chicago's 'Culture in Action,'" The New Art Examiner , (January 1994), pp.18-23. Another important point of reference was the symposium "Mapping the Terrain: New GenrePublic Art," held at the San Francisco Museum of Art in November of 1991. See: Suzanne
Lacy, "Mapping the Terrain: The New Public Art," (part 1) Public Art Review , vol.4., no.2,(Spring/Summer 1993), and "Mapping the Terrain: The New Public Art," (part 2), in Public Art Review , vol.5, no.1, (Fall/Winter 1993).3 Suzi Gablik, "Removing the Frame: An Interview with Mary Jane Jacob," The New Art
Examiner , (January 1994), p.14. Having noted this "new" interest in community-based art Iwould want to acknowledge the persistent labours of a committed group of artists who havebeen working, in some cases for over two decades, on a progressive community-based artpractice. Some of the individuals with whom I'm familiar include Carole Conde and KarlBeveridge in Canada, Conrad Atkinson, Stephen Willats, Peter Dunn and Lorraine Leeson,and groups such as the Black Audio Film Collective and the Hackney Flashers in the U.K., andMartha Rosler and Fred Lonidier in the U.S. Of particular importance here are the community
art and workshop initiatives developed under the Greater London Council between 1981 and1986.4 Suzi Gablik, "Removing the Frame: An Interview with Culture in Action Curator Mary JaneJacob," The New Art Examiner , January 1994, p.51.5Pierre Bourdieu, "Delegation and Political Fetishism," in Language and Symbolic Power ,edited with an introduction by John B. Thompson, translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), p.210.
6The fact that this exchange can never be entirely organic typically leads to one of two responsesin the art world. First, it can lead to a general dismissal of any attempt to analyze or to questionthe position occupied by the artist in the name of a kind of denuded poststructuralism which views
the artists transgression of (what are seen as wholly arbitrary) social and cultural identities asinherently liberatory. All too often this view simply provides a convenient alibi for the fact thatthese liberatory transgressions always seem to move from a position of greater to lesser privilege;the open door of identity swings in only one direction because it is generally the artist who has thecultural and the financial resources necessary to "transgress" boundaries and identities in the firstplace. This is a situation made all the more evident, in the U.S. at any rate, by the ongoingresistance among universities, foundations, publications, and museums to any real commitment towhat is euphemistically called "cultural diversity". Despite some progress many of the keyinstitutions within the arts apparatus remain predominantly white and middle-class.
The other common response to the contingency of the artist/community relationship isa kind of fetishization of authenticity in which no artist may be allowed to work with or represent
any group or community of whom the artist is not an integral part. But how do we defineintegral community membership? It seems to me that there is an inherent discursive violencecommitted any time one subject speaks for another, no matter how firmly they are anchoredwithin a "common" community. Further, the act of defining a coherent community itself, if clearly not "arbitrary," is certainly not a wholly natural and spontaneous process. A communitymust to some extent be "constructed" out of the specific subjectivities of its members in aprocess that will, inevitably, have to promote or legitimate some aspects of these subjectivitiesat the expense of others. The rejection of any form of discursive interaction between artist and"community" that does not qualify as wholly integral can be both Quixotic andcounterproductive. I would suggest a third alternative, which would be to address each case of artist/community interaction as a specific constellation of difference (subject of course to
broader, more socially and culturally consistent trajectories of difference and privilege), thatrequires its own strategic response. I will provide a kind of case-study along these lines in thefinal section of this essay.7Bourdieu, "Delegation and Political Fetishism," p.206.8Ibid, p.207.9 Cited in Andrea Wolper, "Making Art, Reclaiming Lives: The Artist and HomelessCollaborative," in But is it Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism, Nina Felshin, editor, (Seattle: BayPress, 1995), p.258.10Bourdieu, "Delegation and Political Fetishism," p.207.11 See Gayatri Spivak's letter-to-the-editor, "Invisibility of the sweatshop worker" intheGuardian (March 8, 1994). Also see: David Widgery, "Journey of a good man fallen,"Guardian, (February 17, 1994), Lynn MacRitchie, "When politics and art don't mix," Financial Times, (February 29, 1992), and Eddie Chambers review of Jaar's Whitechapel exhibition in Art Monthly .(April 1992), pp.19-20.12 See Seble Dawit and Salem Mekurai, "The West Just Doesn't Get It," The New York Times,(December 7, 1993), section A, p.27. Also see Cylena Simonds, "Missing the Mark," Afterimage, (March 1994), p.3.
13 Andrea Wolper, "Making Art, Reclaiming Lives: The Artist and Homeless Collaborative,"p.259.14Bourdieu, "Delegation and Political Fetishism," p.204.15Here is Andrea Wolper's description of the process of community formation in the work of the Artist and Homeless Collaborative: "participants gain from watching a work of art take shape asa result of their own efforts; women who didn't know one another's names work together toward a common goal; the site of art making is infused with the spirit of cooperation as theworkshops offer the women a rare opportunity to work as a community." Wolper, "Making Art,Reclaiming Lives: The Artist and Homeless Collaborative," p.271.16 Ibid, p.251.17 Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, (New York, NY: Signet, 1981), p.93.18 As Jack Kemp noted in a speech at Hillsdale College in January 1993: "Our welfare systemis. . . an example of how the capital of the human spirit can be squandered in the course of a
few generations. Our best intentions were transformed into an assault on human dignitybecause we ignored the incentives of the market. . ."19 See Irene Lacher, "Eyes on a Cosmic Prize," Los Angeles Times, (Sunday, February 20,1994), Part E, p.1. and Diane Mclellan, "Jung at Heart," The Washingtonian, (May 1994),pp.80, 172-173. As Huffington notes: "welfare has created a cycle of entitlement andresentment, where should be a cycle of gratitude and trust. . . I think gratitude is a wonderfulemotion. . . I don't mean gratitude for a hot meal, but that sense of well-being andconnectedness that often comes unbidden. . . For me, giving is not just for those you give to. Itis for you." McLellean, "Jung at Heart," p.172.20 George F. Will, "The Lethal Crisis in Welfare," in the Manchester Guardian Weekly , (June26, 1994), p.17.21
Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy , (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1967), p.88.22G.W.F. Hegel, Philosopy of Right , translated with notes by T.M. Knox, (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1942) p.150.23Lord Lytton, England and the English, (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1876), p.125.24See Barbara and John Ehrenreich, "The Professional-Managerial Class," in Between Labor
and Capital , Pat Walker, editor, (Boston: South End Press 1979).25Barbara Cruikshank, in a recent study of the origins of "empowerment" rhetoric in the GreatSociety programs of the mid-'60s, describes what she calls "vehicles for the application of technologies of citizenship." Barbara Cruikshank, "The Will to Empower: Technologies of Citizenship and the War on Poverty," Socialist Review , vol.23, no. 4, (1994), pp.29-56.26 Francis McGraw, John Hyde: The Apostle of Prayer , (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany HousePublishers, 1970), p.16.27Here is Wolper on the A&HC again: "If, as I believe, all human beings are born with theability to sing, dance, and make art, the A&HC may help reawaken what our repressive, violentworld most often puts in a state of dormancy." Wolper, "Making Art, Reclaiming Lives: The Artist and Homeless Collaborative," p.276.
28 Ibid, p.251.29 Linda Burnham, "LAPD Inspects Raleigh," Art Papers, vol. 18., no.3. (May/June 1994), p.22.30 As Cruikshank notes: "Activist neo-conservatives like Kemp and Richard Darman delight in'stealing one of the left's words,' aiming to 'empower' the poor by allowing them to govern their own housing, or, in other words, by privatizing public housing projects. In Kemp's formulation,public housing residents could become self-governing, relieving the government of itsobligation to govern." "The Will to Empower: Technologies of Citizenship and the War onPoverty," p.33.31 Kelly continues: "This addiction to revenue funding, and the lobbying needed to keep thedosage increasing, has blinded us to our own strengths. . . We must look to other methods of organising; methods which acknowledge from the start that money can never be neutral under capitalism. We must keep economic relationships transparent and direct, and they must bepart of the debate that occurs within, and about, resources." Owen Kelly, Community, Art and the State: Storming the Citadels, (London: Comedia Publishing Group, 1984), pp.106-107.32 Susan E. Cohen and William Johnson, "Conversation with Dawn Dedeaux," The Consort ,(September 1993), p.11.33 I don't have the space in this essay to examine the controversy that greeted this work whenit opened in LA. The installation was greeted with some concern among members of the African American community in Los Angeles, who objected to its glamourized portrayal of gangmembers. See: Suzanne Muchnic, "Soul Shadows Exhibition: $19,000 Well Spent?" Los Angeles Times, (Saturday, May 1, 1993), p.F-10. and "Artist Set to Be Heard in City CulturalDispute," Los Angeles Times, (Monday, May 31, 1993), p.F-2. Also see Cynthia Wiggins, Afterimage, p.34Barnes other plans included arranging visits for youth on probation, suspended city school
students; a "de-briefing" room staffed by social workers, psychologists, and school counselors.Elizabeth Forbes, "Street Fight," Rochester, New YorkDemocrat and Chronicle, (Tuesday, August 17, 1993) p.1C.35 Susan E. Cohen and William Johnson, "Conversation with Dawn Dedeaux," p.2.36Joe Lewis, "Dawn Dedeaux: Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths," Art Space (March/April1993), p.74.37Ibid, p.74.38Dedeaux's intention here is, on the one hand, to provide some kind of spurious art historicallegitimacy for urban violence, as she says: "it's to elevate the struggle of the streets, the hereand now, these people, their rituals, their aspirations, and to give them equal billing, equalpresentation, equal stage to the way in which we present the remnants of other cultures that
have preceded our own." At the same time she argues that the references to ancient andcontemporary mythologies are intended to show young, would-be criminals that "What [they're]doing is not novel. There have been warriors who have put their lives on the line all along. It'snothing new. It's nothing unique. It's a waste of time." The obvious confusion, perhaps evencontradiction, in Dedeaux's professed aims is symptomatic of her failure to really think throughthe complexity of the issues she has taken on as an artist. Susan E. Cohen and WilliamJohnson, "A Conversation with Dawn Dedeaux," pp.12-13.
39 Jamie Moses, "Danger! Danger! Drive-By Shooting in Progress," Buffalo, NY. Art Voice,vol.4., no.13 (June30-July13, 1993), p.8.40 Joe Lewis, "Dawn Dedeaux, Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths," p.75.41 Susan E. Cohen and William Johnson, "Conversation with Dawn Dedeaux," p.18.42 "Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths—Sponsored by Fleet Bank," ("Montage '93,"Rochester, New York, May 1993) uncredited statement.43Suzi Gablik, "Deconstructing Aesthetics: Toward a Responsible Art," New Art Examiner ,(January 1989), p.32.